Ebola at large? Prisoner with suspected case escapes Ugandan hospital

A woman walks on July 31, 2012 near the entrance to the Mulago Hospital in Kampala, where one person who contracted the deadly Ebola virus died.
(AFP Photo / Michele Sibilone) / AFP

A World Health Organization official has stated that the Ebola outbreak in Uganda is now “under control.” However, a prisoner suspected of being infected with the deadly virus managed to escape from a hospital, spurring fears of further contagion.

“Should his results come back and he is positive, that causes
us a lot of worry,” Dr. Jackson Amune, a commissioner at the
Ugandan Ministry of Health, was quoted by CNN as saying.

The prisoner broke out on Friday night, prompting hospital
officials to handcuff the four remaining prisoners to their beds.
The prisoners are among the 30 people suspected of carrying Ebola
at a hospital in the western town of Kagadi, the center of the
outbreak.

“We do expect the number of suspected cases to
increase,” Dr. Dan Kyamanywa, a local health officer, noted.
“It's important to break transmission and reduce the number
of contacts that suspected cases have.”

In the meantime, Joaquim Saweka, the WHO representative in
Uganda, said the disease was “under control.”

“The structure put in place is more than adequate,” he
told reporters in the capital Kampala. “We are isolating the
suspected or confirmed cases.”

He went on say that everyone known to have had contact with Ebola
victims has been isolated. He also said that Ugandan health
officials have written up a so-called “Ebola contact
list,” containing the names of 176 people who had even the
slightest contact with those infected with Ebola.

Saweka noted the fact that local officials trying to contain the
virus were being assisted organizations such as Doctors Without
Borders and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Ebola outbreak was confirmed on July 28, several days after
villagers in the western district of Kibaale died from it.

The first victim of the virus was a three-month old girl, Doctors
Without Borders said in a statement on Wednesday. Fifteen of the
65 people that attended her funeral ended up contracting the
disease.

Officials did not respond immediately, as the victims' symptoms
were not the usual ones, such as regurgitating blood. The slow
response allowed the disease to spread to other villages, as well
as the towns of Kagadi and Mulago.

“The doctors in Kibaale say the symptoms were a bit atypical
of Ebola,” Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni stated in a
national address on Monday. “They were not clearly like Ebola
symptoms. Because of that delay, the sickness spread to another
village.”

Another problem doctors encountered was that many suspected cases
refused to go to hospital as they feared they would get infected
there. Other suspected Ebola patients, dissatisfied with poor
hospital conditions, broke out of their wards to protest the way
they were being treated. The Ugandan Ministry of Health also
stated that a number of people were refusing treatment
“because they believed that the cause of the illness was due
to ‘evil spirits.’”

So far, the disease has claimed the lives of at least 16 people.

The Ebola virus was first detected in Zaire (today called the
Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1976, and was named after a
river in the country. The disease spreads through bodily fluids,
and the incubation period can last from two days to two weeks.

The latest outbreak is the fourth in Uganda since 2000, when over
220 people died from the virus in the north of the country.